Robert Vellekoop

Robert Vellekoop (*1984 Osnabrück) lives and works in Hamburg. He studied in Prof Anselm Reyle’s class at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, from where he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in 2016. 

Robert Vellekoop’s depictions of urban scenes and industrial zones, motorway junctions, factory halls and glowing lanterns are always charged with a cinematic atmosphere. The artist’s genre-spanning works feature landscapes, streets and freeways reminiscent of American film sets, where minimalist still-lives of tables, chairs, bottles and plants are composed into urban, yet deserted scenes. This cinematic narrative style allows him to reject clear interpretations and to question politics of visibility and vision. In the words of Michel Foucault in Surveillance and Punishment (1975), “visibility is a trap” (Foucault, 1975). 

A recurring motif in Vellekoop’s work is the presence of artificial light sources, such as streetlamps in urban spaces. An integral part of urban infrastructure since the mid-19th century, streetlamps are also part of the surveillance of public space, contributing to a ‘panopticon’ in which individual bodies in society are disciplined by a  sense of constant and internalised visibility. This is part of what Foucault calls biopolitics, namely the power to regulate populations. 

Vellekoop’s wall works are based on drawings, developed and refined through a slow process. For his paintings, he often uses wooden panels and applies various layers of acrylic paint, then sanding down the surface before building up richer layers of colour. In turn, sculptural works are informed by the paintings. Vellekoop’s lamps, with spherical bulbs of frosted glass mounted on painted bases, have an idiosyncratic autonomy akin to the work of the Dadaists or Constructivists. 

Robert Vellekoop had numerous solo exhibitions (selection): Haverkampf Leistenschneider, Berlin; Evelyn Drewes Galerie, Hamburg; Schierke Seinecke, Frankfurt am Main; Galerie in der Wassermühle, Trittau, DE and has been part of a large number of group exhibitions (selection): Villa am Elbhang, Hamburg; Barlachhalle K, Hamburg; Falckenberg Collection, Hamburg; Kunsthaus Hamburg.